X-MEN #166

Previously For The X-Men…

• Former villainess Emma Frost joined the X-Men and immediately had Magneto kill Jean Grey for her, so she could move in with Cyclops. She is now headmistress of the institute.
• Polaris experienced the Genoshan Massacre, and is suffering from trauma as a result
• Havok helped her out by jilting her on their wedding day
• To add to her misery, now she has to date Iceman
• Iceman is a tosspot
• Gambit was blinded by Rogue in an ‘accident’, but had his sight restored to him by the miraculous Sage. Naturally, this happened in a Chris Claremont comic because nobody else will feature Sage in their work.
• Wolverine likes stabbing people.

And now...



X-MEN #166
“Golgotha Part 1: And What Dark Beast…”



Featuring: Havok, Rogue, Polaris, Emma Frost, Gambit and Iceman.

Our band of heroes (and Iceman) have gone to the South Pole after receiving a distress call from some mutants who were trying to build “a mutant utopia” away from Magneto and the X-Men and all that political nonsense. Obviously, this plan has not gone well. Iceman has not read the case notes he was given by Havok, so Polaris tells him off for being such a child. After blasting a way in, Havok leads them into the compound and finds that all the mutants inside are dead. Gambit makes a sadistic joke about the poor structuring of the building, and Rogue rolls her eyes. It appears, however, that the mutants weren’t attacked by an outside force, but instead turned on each other for some reason. Iceman recognises one of the dead – Butterfly – and calls him a “z-list mutant, X-Men wannabe”, but Rogue ignores him and goes to check the bodies instead. This is because Milligan’s X-women are much smarter than the men. The body she kneels over has only just passed, and it appears that he killed himself by ripping his own heart out. On the wall is one word: Golgotha. Written in blood!

Rogue starts to explain what the word means – “Also known as Mount Cavalry, the place of the crucifixion of Christ.” She starts to explain the Latin terminology of the word, which leads the rest of the team to realise that Rogue is merely repeating what Emma Frost is telling her telepathically. Iceman asks her for the football scores, and Emma gives him the derision he deserves. In fact, she goes on better then that and tells him that his remark was so stupid that it deserves disdain. Remember the days when Emma Frost was the most fun X-Character? She tells Rogue about some other attacks – including one which has taken over the whole of Los Angeles - which may be linked to this one, but Rogue doesn’t have time to tell any of the others because a stranger appears. He calls himself “the sinner”, and then he then shoots himself in the head for no apparent reason at all.

Rogue gives us some monologue about how much she wants to hold Gambit’s hand for reassurance after seeing something so horrible, so obviously the poor girl is in shock and has started lying to herself. Lorna also has a reaction to the violence, although it is less ridiculous – she starts reliving the genocide she was witness to and starts shaking. “This is all my fault…” she begins, and Iceman goes over to comfort her by telling her that this isn’t Genosha. And in doing so, he has implied that she was responsible for Genosha. Oh, Iceman. Havok gets very clingy when he sees Iceman hug Polaris, and shouts at him for breaking defensive formation. While the two of them argue, another mutant appears and utters the immortal line “I’m gonna love you like only a mutant with superhuman explosive bone marrow, infrared eyes and low-level paranoid schizophrenia can love you…” Ooh! I love this character! Lorna does not, however, and she blasts him away. There’s a fight, but Lorna quickly ends it by choking the mutant to death with some metal tubing. Slight overreaction there, but fair enough.

Later on, Havok has a chat with Lorna about how killing is bad, and that true X-Men don’t do it ever. Well, sometimes. He’s interrupted by the arrival of some zombified mutants. I’m not sure the X-Men even move for the majority of this issue. The problems always seem to come to them. Anyway, Havok tries talking to the zombies but gets nowhere. This is probably because they are zombies, Havok. Rogue has another idea, and takes off her glove… Havok tries to stop her, but she says “what’s the point of having these ridiculous ideas if I don’t use them once in a while”, which tells us that Milligan’s going to write the first interesting portrayal of Rogue in a long while. She touches a woman and instantly relives all of her life – in reverse order, which means she ends up as a foetus. A Rogue-foetus. It’s an odd image, and Emma immediately goes in after Rogue in order to save her from regressing back into someone else’s testicles.

When Rogue wakes up again, she finds herself in the middle of an attack from some crazed mutants, and has to go on the offensive. While fighting, Havok asks her what happened, and she replied “I got weirded out.” It turns out that the memories had been wiped by someone, leaving blank holes of memory for her to get trapped in. Once the battle is over, Havok interrogates one of the attackers, but gets only babble in return. “You’ll be next!” cries the attacker, before he bites off his own tongue. Yikes. Rogue sighs, because she knows that she’ll have to touch this psycho in order to find out what’s going on, but Havok blocks her yet again. Before he can do anything, though, Emma turns up and immediately takes over, which says more about Havok’s leadership skills than I ever can. She takes the piss out of Alex and Rogue for a bit, and then watches on with a smirk whilst the tongue-biting mutant suffers a heart attack and dies.

Emma is smirking because she managed to quickly read the mutant’s mind before he died. “I know who Golgotha is,” she tells the group. “Or more to the point… I know where Golgotha is…”

To Be Continued!


Thoughts!

This was a solid first issue, although there are some jarring scene changes throughout. The way in which the creatures all came to find the X-Men one after another was a bit silly, and the artwork by Salvador Larocca – although solid, and with great emphasis on the characters – sometimes grows confusing and hard to follow. Milligan is having to deal with several old plotlines as he starts off, most notably that of Polaris/Havok/Iceman, and at the moment it seems that both Havok and Iceman are going to behave childishly as a result of their feelings for Lorna, so hopefully this is leading to a payoff later on. Lorna herself is far more broken than she was during Austen’s run, and seems to be reacting more realistically to the trauma she’s meant to be suffering from. The relationship between Rogue and Gambit seems forced, and they both seem quite bored of one another.

Twelve Vital X-Men Characters You Probably Don't Know

4: Psylocke

Who Is She?

This one’s going to be fun! Elizabeth Braddock is the sister of Captain Britain (uh, yeah, there is a Captain Britain. He wears a Union Jack as part of his costume, and looks Aryan, but is totally radical. I think he used Excalibur once, too. Albion! This is besides the point.) She appeared first as a backing character in her brother’s comic series, until the lure of X was just too strong. Chris Clairemont, her creator and a man who seems to harbour an overwhelming crush on his character, sent her to an alternate universe where she was given ‘bionic eyes’. Now, I haven’t read many of the older X-Men comics, but just hearing the phrase ‘she was given bionic eyes’ intrigues me. Anyway, she returned to the real world with psychic powers and these bionic eyes of hers, and got recruited into the X-Men almost immediately. After she joined, at some point she died her hair purple – the defining character trait for her for a long time. She called herself Psylocke, and became a valuable member of the X-Men team. She ran interference mainly, keeping the team aware of what was going on using her telepathy whilst staying in a safe location.

Then she got kidnapped and her race was changed from British to Asian. Oh, yeah, there’s that. Chris Clairemont has some crazy ideas sometimes, and his idea for Psylocke was to have her be abducted and brainwashed into a crazy ninja assassin who would then attack the X-Men. She also, during this process, became Asian for some reason.

Not. Impressed.

Chris Bachalo can make anything look good, however, and when Betsy was most recently seen in the mainstream Marvel Universe she looked like this:


Hotness! Anyway, Clairemont killed her off in 2001, but she returned again later on, only to promptly be sent to hell. Did I just say hell? I meant to say ‘New Exiles’, a comic featuring a cast of characters who travel from dimension to dimension for little reason. It’s a comic Marvel seem to have given Clairemont as a way of keeping him away from the proper X-Men characters, but he demanded that if he were to be sent away in this fashion, he should at least be allowed Psylocke. So she went with him, and is now completely out of continuity with the rest of the X-Men, and that’s pretty annoying because she’s awesome. Happily, rumours abound say that she’ll finally return to the X-Men in 2009 at some point. Fingers crossed!



Why Is She Important?

On top of being incredibly awesome? Well, Betsy has been one of the main X-Men for aaaaaaaages. Like Havok, she’s always been hanging around in the background whenever something important happens, perhaps taking one or two moments in the spotlight before retreating again. What’s great about Psylocke is that she is accepted. If you list the main X-Men, you have Jean, you have Storm, you have Rogue. And you have Psylocke. It’s accepted that she is one of the most important X-Women.

There aren’t many of them left anymore. With Jean dead, Kitty missing, Rogue AWOL and Storm sidelined, the X-titles are coming dangerously close to having an all-male cast. That’s why Psylocke needs to return. She’s a classic character who has been vital in many of the biggest events – like Inferno, or X-Cutioner’s Song – and her presence helps make any comic feel like it truly belongs to the X-Men franchise. It’s hard to put, but surrounding Betsy is an air of credibility that the books are sorely missing at this moment in time. And she is a purple-haired ninja lady who has one metal sword and one psychic sword as her main weapons. She’s awesome.

Psylocke as a character is belligerent, too. Many of the X-Men passively sit by and wait to be attacked, but Psylocke is one of the few characters (along with Wolverine, natch, although recently he’s been pretty lazy as well) who seeks out the baddies before anything bad happens. It’s that kind of attitude that gives writers the chance to write a different kind of story – one where the X-Men go on the offensive, instead of find themselves in situations where they must struggle to survive. Psylocke is important, thusly, because she gives the X-Men momentum. And they desperately need that at the moment.

Twelve Vital X-Men Characters You Probably Don't Know

6: The New Mutant Women

Who Are They?

The New Mutants were the second generation of X-Men to be created, after Cyclops and Beast and all those people. The women, in particular, have been a part of X-Men history for a long time. The ones I’m focusing on here are:

• Wolfsbane - Rahne Sinclair, who is essentially a werewolf
  
• Mirage - Dani Moonstar, who used to have powers but has since lost them.
  
• Karma – Xi’an Coy Manh, who can possess other people.
  
• Magik – Illyana Rasputin, who was a mystic
  
• Magma – Amara Aquila, who controls, surprise, magma

These five women all joined, at one point or another, the ‘New Mutant’ group, and went off on adventures which only rarely intertwined with those of the X-Men. They all keep busy, with Wolfsbane, Dani, Karma and Magma all working as advisors and teachers for the new new new generation of mutants and Magik being… well dead, actually. But she came back recently. Rahne left the mansion after dating a student for a while, and since became a private detective and now works with a secret team of X-Men used for assassination missions. As a strongly religious woman, that sure does cause some problems. I won’t focus on anything specific here, but they’re a very diverse set of women (Karma is a Vietnamese lesbian, for example, while Illyana is the sister of Piotr Rasputin – Colossus, the guy who turns into metal – and travels into hell from time to time). Here they are:

You can see in the picture, going clockwise from top left: Illyana, Dani Moonstar, Karma, Magma, and Wolfsbane.


Why Are They Important?

They’re important because they are all strong women. The X-Men have never been short of strong female characters, but the New Mutants are different because their characters started out as teenagers and have over time reached their mid-twenties. They’ve been assigned many different things, but have always been defined by their strength and friendship with each other. It’s little things like seeing these character maintain their friendships that rewards fans of the X-Men, and keeps the whole series feeling, as far as possible, realistic. When Dani got a job working as an advisor for the new kids, she didn’t hesitate to invite Wolfsbane and Karma to help her with the job, and later she asked Magma to come along too. They’re all strictly B-List characters, but you’ll be hard-pushed to find any comics series which can give you such strongly-defined, humanised B-Listers.

Twelve Vital X-Men Characters You Probably Don’t Know

9: Northstar

Who Is He?

Jean-Paul Beaubier is quite different to the majority of other superheroes, and not just because he has the ability to fly and move at superhuman speeds. And not just because he wears these totally rad sunglasses when he’s on duty, either. Northstar, as he calls himself, is different because he is Canadian. Aside from Wolverine, there aren’t many superheroes that have been outed as Canadian yet, but this has turned to the advantage of the many, because it means the X-Writers can make him say little lines of French whenever they want, and it makes sense. Jean-Paul has a sister (who also has powers), Aurora, and as is often the case with comic-book siblings, his character is very much defined by that of his sister. He started off with a team called Alpha Flight, who eventually disbanded, and then moves to the X-Men a while later.

Northstar is a great character within the X-Universe because he’s famous already for being a world-champion skier. Using this position, he later wrote a book detailing his experiences as a mutant in order to help other people who might be in the same situation. Although he has a snobby attitude, and a wealth of literary quotes at his disposal whenever he needs them, Jean-Paul has the best interests of mutants and other minorities at heart (I’m really straining not to mention that other defining characteristic of his, you may be noticing, X-Men fans). He joins the X-Men quite late on, but wastes barely any time in having a miserable life when his sister got brainwashed and he himself got killed by an evil Wolverine. He came back, although he and his sister at this time were both in considerable states of mental… weirdness.

It’s all been cleared up now though, thank goodness, and Jean-Paul has taken on a proper role with the X-Men, on top of his role as an ambassador for mutants everywhere. Sadly, he’s seemingly got rid of those rad specs of his.



Why Is He Important?

Okay, okay, so let’s get this over with. Northstar is an out-and-proud homosexual character. As such, he’s one of two X-Men to have come out over the years, and one of the most well-known gay characters in comics…. ever. Not many other comics have gay characters in them, and it’s taken until recently for any of the gay characters who did exist to get recognition for something other than their gayness. It’s not his homosexuality that makes Northstar so important to the X-Men though; it’s the way he feels about it. It doesn’t define him. Other characters get saddled with turning gay as a way of generating cheap interest, but Northstar has been around for a long time, and his outing hasn’t been sensationalised much at all, if ever. It just became another of those parallels that the X-Men have so brilliantly drawn over the years, between minority groups and those who don’t like minority groups.

Oh, and did I mention that Jean-Paul is totally rad? I think I might’ve actually, yeah. Northstar is important to the X-Men because he is one of the few characters who actually tends to make sense. He’s one of the smartest mutants in terms of tactics, strategy, and common sense, and those are three skills that the mutants could really do with at the moment. If ever there is a character who could wrestle away the leadership from Cyclops, then it is Northstar, because he’s just so darned smart. He teaches business and economics, and speaks different languages! And he can FLY! Northstar is completely one of the most important X-Men that nobody talks about (and honestly, his role can only increase in future, given his limbo-status at the mo) and hopefully will get more star billing soon.

Twelve Vital X-Men Characters You Probably Don’t Know

11: Rachel Summers

Who Is She?

Oh, now that’s a bloody difficult question. She first appeared in the alternate-reality storyline “Days Of Future Past”, where she lives in a dystopian future that she wishes to end. To this effect, she sends one of her friends back in time to change the course of history, which her friend succeeds in doing. Then she gets time-displaced as a result, or something, and eventually turns up in the real world. Something like that. If you think that’s a complicated origin story, then boy – you’ve got a lot to learn about the X-Men. Anyway, Rachel is the daughter of an alternate reality Scott Summers (Cyclops) and Jean Grey, although when she is sent back in time to meet the rest of the X-Men, Jean has since died and Scott is married to someone else. This gives her some, in fairness justified, family issues.

She then went backwards and forwards in time a lot, making her backstory more and more complicated and impossible for anyone to understand. So we’ll ignore it! Rachel, once she realised her mother was dead, renamed herself “Marvel Girl” in tribute to Jean, and wore an outfit not dissimilar to mum’s. Oh, but then her mum came back to life, and that was nice for Rachel. Then Jean died again, and Scott moved in with another woman. So Rachel changed her name to Rachel Grey, in disapproval of dad’s taste in women, and joined the X-Men properly. She looks like this:



She’s currently out in space, making rubbish dating choices and being angry at everyone after most of her family were killed off.


Why Is She Important?

Well for a start, just look at who her parents are: Scott Summers and Jean Grey, arguably the most important X-Men characters who ever existed. As such, she was implanted firmly into the ranks of the X-Men once she arrived, and has since been surrounded by family – grandparents, an uncle, a… cousin? Her family timeline is incredibly confusing to keep up with. Most of them are dead now, apart from cousin, dad, and uncle, but even without any of her family around she remains incredibly important to the X-Men, for one simple reason. She’s the host of the single most dangerous power-source in the galaxy.

Pretty nifty, eh? It’s called The Phoenix Force, and it’s what was responsible for killing her mother the first time round, or something. Anyway, with that power she can fly through space and blow stuff up with energy, on top of her already-formidable telekinetic and telepathic abilities. That could well be why the writers have currently sent her out into space – she’s just too strong.

Twelve Vital X-Men Characters You Probably Don’t Know

The X-Men happen to be one of the most well-known rosters of comic-book characters in existence. Everybody seems to know who Cyclops, Wolverine, and Jean Grey are, and the series also gave prominence to characters who were less well-known – Colossus, Shadowcat, and so on. Of course, Professor X and Magneto were the two mainstays of the films, and also of the cartoons that run irregularly on children’s TV from time to time. They’re the two most iconic ones. There are other characters though, who barely ever get shown in the TV shows and never appeared in the movies (or, in one case, had such a small role you wouldn’t recognise her). And we’re all about celebrating the underdog here on Wilftonville, so we are, and we thought: hey, why not give these characters their due? Anyone who reads comics will know who they are, but those of you who only know of the X-Men from TV and film will hopefully come away from this experience having learnt something epic and powerful.

Here are the unsung heroes of the X-Men, one of the biggest comic franchises in the World, what don’t never get their due from anyone. Until now!


12. Cannonball

Who Is He?

Cannonball is the alias of Sam Guthrie, a mutant who can release thermo-chemical energy from his skin, in a manner similar to a jet rocket. He releases this energy primarily from his feet, which enables him to fly through the air at high speed and force. This power also gives him an impenetrable blast field which is, y’know, pretty useful. He looks like this:



Note the goggles he wears while he’s flying: Sam Guthrie is no stranger to fashion. He was introduced as part of the second generation of mutants, The New Mutants, whose function would be to eventually become the next set of X-Men once Cyclops hung up the visor. As such, he teamed up with a group of other lesser-known characters for a long time, but has recently come to the fore and has entered the world of the X-Men proper, taking his place amongst their roster and proving himself to be pretty useful in a fight.

Sam Guthrie is from Kentucky, so the lucky fellow gets lumbered with one of those accents that comic book writers love to write – ‘I’ becomes ‘ah’, etc. Recently he was fighting alongside Rogue, another character from the south, and the number of ah’s almost blotted out the sun. He’s typically portrayed as a sarcastic sort of guy, who wants what’s best for everyone, and is completely loyal to his friends. He also constantly chews a matchstick, for no discernable reason, and is a natural leader. Perhaps those two facts are interlinked?


Why Is He Important?

Cannonball is important because he symbolised the ‘legacy’ aspect of the X-Men comics. The idea was that the mutants appeared in sets, where the first set would be replaced by the next after time, and then the next – because the Mansion where they all live is a school for other mutants, the idea was that you’d see the students grow up to become teachers, and then join the X-Men for real. Cannonball, thus far, has been one of only two of them to have really achieved this, as he joined first the team on ‘Uncanny X-Men’ (the flagship title) and then most recently became a part of the adjectiveless X-Men title, as part of Rogue’s team. He’s been one quite a journey, but now he’s made it to the big leagues, and that makes him a very important figure indeed in the continuing legacy of the X-Men.

How To Talk To…. A Comic Book Fan (Part 2)

There are moments in life that are sent to try us. When you go on a trip to the seaside and it starts raining, or when you try and tape a TV show and realise you’ve accidentally recorded ITV instead. But how about when you start talking to someone, only to find out that they have an obscure fascination of some kind which completely passes you by? In our occasional series here at Illicitly Eating Flowers, we’ll try to help you bluff your way through such conversations, with your sanity still intact.

The Different Comics: Marvel

The Marvel Universe is based more around teams than the DC Universe is, because there are so many characters running around together. Marvel own the X-Men, and Spiderman, and the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four, as their four main titles, and all of them are simple enough to follow in a conversation, if you know where to go. The important thing when talking to a fan of Marvel comics is to mention how much you hate “retcons”. A retcon is when a writer in, say, 2002, revisits a story from 1975 or something and changes the reason why it happened, or the ending, which means that characters come back to life or die or turn evil. This happens a lot in Marvel, and is in fact the only thing you need to mention if someone tells you they like Spiderman. See, Spiderman has just undergone a story called “One More Day” which wiped out the past 20 years of comic-book continuity, thus rendering all the stories told about him over the past 20 years void. It’s the most talked-about thing in Marvel at the moment, and by saying “I don’t care about Spiderman because of OMD (one more day), which ruined the series” you can skip having to talk about him altogether. There are other comics though:

The Fantastic 4 – The Fantastic 4 are made up of Mr Fantastic Reed Richards, who can stretch his skin into any shape he wants; his wife Susan, who can turn invisible; her brother Johnny who can burst into flames at will and fly around; and Ben Grimm, Reed’s best friend, whose skin has been turned into rock. They were all affected by gamma radiation during an experiment gone wrong, thus giving them super-powers. Their main enemy is Doctor Doom, and their stories tend to ignore the general Marvel Universe in favour of deliberately complicated and paradoxical stories about different dimensions and time travel and space.

The X-Men is the group with Wolverine in it. Founded by Charles Xavier, the X-Men run a school where mutants can gather to learn about controlling their abilities. The X-Men themselves are a military team who protect mutant rights around the globe, as they are thought of as a lesser species. The X-men are currently split up due to a massive event that happened last December, but all you need to say here is that your favourite comic is either ‘X-Factor’ or whatever Mike Carey is currently writing. Your favourite X-Man must NOT be Wolverine; he appears in at least five different books monthly and is oversaturated to the point of ridiculousness. Cyclops should be your character of choice, or Jean Grey (who is currently dead, but very much beloved by fans)

The New Avengers/The Mighty Avengers are also where you will find Wolverine. These two groups of superheroes are made up of pretty much every other famous Marvel character, including Iron Man, Captain America (although he has recently been killed), and Spiderman – who has his own book on the side. The two groups are on opposing sides of the law; the Mighty Avengers are a legal team, the New Avengers are an underground team made up of heroes who don’t want to work with the law (Wolverine, Spidey, and several lesser-known characters are in this group).

The main issues with Marvel are that there are so many different characters who have some kind of importance to the Universe they live in. DC comics focus generally around their big five people, whereas Marvel… well they tend to tell lots of big stories with as many people as they can. Another issue is that Marvel is currently in the midst of a big event called “Secret Invasion”, where many of their characters have been taken over by evil shape-shifters, thus rendering it the worst possible time for you to get drawn into a conversation about Marvel Comics. If the conversation does take this route, then quickly derail proceedings by mentioning your respect for one of the following writers:

Ed Brubaker – he writes Captain America and Daredevil, two of the most acclaimed comics at Marvel at the moment. Captain America especially is hailed as the best comic you can buy anywhere, currently. Brubaker killed off Captain America, who is a massive character in the States (of course), and has just introduced a new one. Brubaker is the first name you should drop into the conversation, followed by endless words of praise.

Chris Claremont – who is responsible for the X-Men, more or less. He took over X-Men after they got to issue 70 or so and ran with it for hundreds of issues. This guy is the God of X-Men, and is responsible for classic stories such as “The Dark Phoenix Saga” and “Days of Future Past”. Nowadays he’s been pushed to the side and writes stories which mainly seem to concentrate on filling in the gaps on the X-Men, but in his ‘glory days’ nobody was more important.

Joss Whedon – loved and hated in equal measure by Marvel fans, because his stories for the Astonishing X-Men (the most famous team – Cyclops, Wolverine, etc) and Runaways (about a group of kids who, uh, run away from home. Incidentally, he took over this title from Brian K. Vaughan, who is as loved by Marvel as he is by DC) are fantastic, but take ages to arrive. So mention how much you enjoy Joss Whedon’s stories, but point out that he takes so long to get each one out that it’s hardly worth it anymore. This will get you kudos.

All three are keeping out of Secret Invasion, thus rendering them unconfusing… well, considering. If you really want the conversation to end quickly, however, then tell the other person that your favourite writer is Chuck Austen. He’s possibly one of the most hated writers for Marvel of all time, and you’re guaranteed to disgust the Marvel fanboy just by mentioning him. That’s Marvel sorted, then: tomorrow we look at independents. And yes, the primer is going to involve bearded wizards from Northampton.